


The Play's The Thing: Labyrinth characters reimagined

by tnico



Category: Labyrinth (1986), Original Work, Tam Lin (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Elizabethan Era, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Cornwall, Gen, Reboot, Remix, character re-design, setting redesign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26530663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnico/pseuds/tnico
Summary: An art school assignment to redesign and recast the central characters of a movie in an alternate setting. I chose Labyrinth, and the Elizabethan era of west Europe.The assignment was over three weeks, so I've separated it into the general parts.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 12





	1. Week 1: Initial concepts

**Author's Note:**

> apologies in advance for the layout. i have no natural sense of graphic design and when i'm vibing i literally just like *splat* on a page

# Redesign: Sarah

# Redesign: Jareth

# Redesign: Toby


	2. Week 1: supplement: a ramble regarding premise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not edited! for that you gotta pay me not make me pay you lmao

The Play's the Thing

  
story beats: weird owl man kidnaps baby, terrorizes girl, still has time to stage musical numbers

  
so basically labyrinth is the story of a fantasy staple: journey into your own mindscape. sarah, a normal, middle class girl enamored with fantasy tropes, has her little brother spirited away by jareth, the goblin king, in exchange for fulfilling her fantasies of living in a world of fantasy. it's made explicitly clear by jareth's lines and the conclusion of the story that he is explicitly powered, and debatably entirely shaped, by sarah's fantasies. Her expectations of high fantasy and a straightforward hero's journey (the average expectation i suspect any modern fantasy-reading teenager might have if suddenly magically spirited away to a fantasy world) are met. And the name of the thing proves true: traversing the labyrinth to slay the minotaur is only worth it if you have the magic thread that will lead you back out again. THAT's the important part. Without her dismantling of jareth's power through the realization that she herself is the battery, and exiting the labyrinth of her own fantasy, she'd likely have been stuck there forever, slaying the minotaur time and time again and yet never escaping.

  
So! I'd say the storyline of Labyrinth and the myths of the fairy court hit on the same themes in ways that are intentional. I wanted to create a project that showcased the things I really enjoy about working in story design: research, thinking things through to create a logically consistent world where every in-universe question has an answer, and messing around with costume.  
Messing around with the basics of Labyrinth was always going to be complicated because any change to Sarah would theoretically change the entire nature of the labyrinth, and thus all creature and set design. Sarah likes staple fantasy tropes and the historimythical Arthurian canon; it follows that her labyrinth is a straightforward generic-western-europe-medieval-fantasy hero's journey staffed by knights dedicated to chivalric codes. If Sarah were from, for example, pre-Meiji-era japan, however, she would only respond to the references to the Tolkien Standard or a sword in a stone with a blank stare. Her personal labyrinth would ook entirely different in most every way, and probably have some really fun creature designs inspired by yokai and bakemono, which is fun to think about but a lot of design work to do.

  
That's why I kept the design to Sarah, Toby, and Jareth- I have a whole lot of ideas I like about Tudor Sarah's labyrinth being an ongoing dramatic play that never resolves, with the set design of her labyrinth being inspired by actual, Tudor-complicit theater set design, and the creatures within themed on the idea they're actors in a play or stage hands who keep looping their roles endlessly until Sarah breaks them out- but that's a design project that only sells itself if I can present the complete overhaul, which would be a lot of work. Best to stick with the most important characters.  
I set out with research on the idea that I was creating what an average Tudor-era girl's fantasy might look like. So someone likely illiterate, whose exposure to fantasy probably consisted of fairy tales, the various iterations British Isles fae court myths, and theater plays.

Given the eternal problem of making stories about the common man in history is always the fact that we'll always have way more idea what the rich and powerful, who had the ability to make all the records and image, are doing at any given time, I thought theming it on Tudor theater would be a very nice in. Like Tudor Sarah, everyone's had enough experience with Shakespeare to know something about the era and its tropes, and the heroes of plays tended to all be the same class of nobility and royalty we have all those bougie costume portraits of (which, again, we of the modern era will always know more about joe peasant, who couldn't read nor commission playwrights, but could at least attend the shows.)

  
This means Sarah's vague impression of the fairy court tropes that undergird the original labyrinth are likely to be influences by Sarah's no doubt similarly vague impressions of the Tudor courts: a bunch of rich, self--centered assholes swanning about in fancy costumes and holding lavish spectacles centered around their intricate webs of deceit, status-climbing, courtship and occasional gruesome murder. Tie it in to Tudor Sarah being unable to remember the ending of Tam Lin before eventually realizing that just as the way to free Tam Lin was for Janet to hold tight to him even as he appeared to be all manner terrifying and harmful creatures, Sarah must hold tight and see through the fantasy of the labyrinth Jareth has created. A fantasy cannot change the true nature of anything; that's what work and effort are for. You have no power here, etc. etc.

  
And so we have a very tidy porting over of a story from one era to another in a way I think manages to keep to the themes of the Labyrinth story. And I got to do what I like best, over-thinking the implication of everything. I had a lot of fun!


	3. Week 2: Edited designs, costumes, & speedround hoggle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> them: you need a main costume  
> me: i have no leads for what jareth would wear as a main costume because he wears ALL COSTUMES so i thought it'd be fun to have him constantly changing them, that's why i made the page for--  
> them: work it out
> 
> very of-their-kind response tho lol. and they _never_ read my notes.

# Sarah: redesign, with input

# Jareth: more costume concepts

# Speedround! Hoggle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lil look into my design process there yes nerdlore DOES always feature prominently WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT, NERDLORE, FROM ME, A NICO,


	4. Week 2: supplement: i demand more neck thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again time and effort spent to prove the specifics of my work make up for the deficits of my output the teacher never read!! it's kind of nice to get them out here, but it never even occured to me before bc i'm so used to my actual idea getting slept on lmao can you tell i'm bitter??


	5. Week 3: final designs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and we're done! i still think the idea of one costume is bullshit but it was nice to do some creative work!! one more to round it out, though.

# Final: Sarah

# Final: Jareth & Toby


	6. Week 3: supplement: now i'm just being silly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm quite fond of that weird owl man and his endless drama, in the end.

# 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck it up you funky lil fae lord

**Author's Note:**

> it was fun! now if only i can convince my school to just let me work on my own projects ugggghhhhh
> 
> if you liked it, please leave kudos! i like to see who's liking it


End file.
